5 Inputs, 4 Quotes, 3 Thoughts, 2 Challenges and 1 Question (December 9th, 2021)

“Helping you achieve high performance medicine.” Read this on OtOVets.com Happy December, Your journey of professional development is important to me. Please hit that reply button or join our Facebook Group to share your journey and inspiration with our community. You never know when your ideas, thoughts, actions, or reflection will inspire another vet out there! Alright, let’s get to it! Here are 5 Inputs to Inspire, 4 Quotes to Contemplate, 3 Thoughts to Ponder, 2 Challenges to Conquer and 1 Reflection Question to help you grow this month. 5 Inputs to Inspire I. Many individuals who follow OTO closely have come to us because they were seeking to develop themselves OR had attempted to develop themselves in the past and faced resistance. This resistance often stems from a bottleneck in their own personal system(s). BUT bottlenecks are not necessarily bad, in fact, they are a necessary side effect of effective personal development. Blogger Dylan Woon has an interesting take on the necessity of bottlenecks in his article Bottlenecks – How successful people leverage them for unstoppable growth. II. Our identification and correction of the bottlenecks surrounding us is a unique expression of a psychological concept known as Autonomy. Autonomy refers to our ability to feel as though we are making our own choices about how we are acting. By choosing to identify, plan for and correct bottlenecks within our lives we as high performers are expressing unique and advanced levels of Autonomy over our own performance. To learn more about Autonomy and its effect on your personal development, progress, and momentum checkout this Psychology Today article. III. By this point you might be seeing a trend in this month’s newsletter; mainly that the identification of bottlenecks and the correction of them is a concept I believe is very important to the high performing medical professional. Part of the reason I’m so bought into this is because of a Knowledge Broker by the name of August Bradley. August is a very progressive systems thinker and his PPV personal development system is something I’m actively using to improve my life now. As a leading expert in the area of systems thinking, specifically in the area of personal development, there is no one else I’d rather have show you exactly how a good system can aid your personal development. Checkout this YouTube video; Systems Thinking to Design Your Life — Life OS by August to begin to see just how you can use systems to help you aggressively accelerate your own growth. IV. Many times, when people start considering systems thinking they think that it needs to be a complex problem or multistep solution. The type of problem you don’t see day to day in your life. Librarian and avid reader Ivaylo Durmonski’s article 7 Ways To Use Systems Thinking in Your Daily Life shows you how you can use systems thinking day to day to address and eliminate bottlenecks resulting in improvements in the quality of your life, the inputs you put into your body and mind, as well as becoming a more productive medical professional. V. Looking for a comprehensive all in one article that will help you ID your current systems, review them for bottlenecks, create new processes within them and really begin to autonomously pick what systems you want to work on? Then checkout this ground level guiding blog by Weidel on Winning. 4 Quotes to Contemplate I. Physician, psychologist, author, inventor, philosopher, and consultant Edward de Bono to challenge you to consider if you’re defending your systems for the right reasons: The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate. II. Habits expert James Clear discusses how working harder might just be a bottleneck in disguise: Time spent working hard is often better spent identifying where the bottleneck is located. Working hard on the wrong thing leads to frustration, not progress. III. Tiago Forte discusses how delegation, one of the top bottlenecks hamstringing veterinarians today, will limit your capabilities and ultimate progression:

As long as you and your capabilities are the bottleneck, what you can achieve will always be limited. And you will always have to be there yourself making sure everything goes as planned. IV. Dealing with continuous, demoralizing bottlenecks? Then consider this Ralph Marston quote about how your mentality surrounding the issue may actually be the bottleneck: Whatever you’re doing, a sense of superiority will make you worse at it. Humility, on the other hand, will make you better. The moment you think you’ve got it all figured out, your progress stops. Instead, continue to advance and improve by reminding yourself how much more there will always be to discover. 3 Thoughts to Ponder I. If we really stopped and looked closely at our systems, we would be surprised by how many of them are not controlled by us but instead by an outside individual or event. Many times, this is a result of a default. That is to say; because we have failed to put a system in place “life” has done it for us. Taking back control of these systems can be quite mentally rewarding. II. Want to make a change in life? Set a system in place for it. Don’t like getting yelled at by your dentist to floss; find a system that gets you to do it daily. Don’t like feeling rushed every morning; find a system that gives you back time to feel prepared. Don’t like the amount of energy you have after work; alter your systems to allow for a more efficient day. III. Adopt Jocko’s philosophy in life. Facing a problem? A crisis? A bad day? Simply say GOOD and then use it as the seed to create a positive perspective out of it. Use that seed to build a new system that takes that experience or problem from a negative to a positive output. 2 Challenges to Conquer I. What is one reoccurring problem in your life? You know; the nagging one that keeps coming up over and over and over again. List that problem and look at what are the causative factors leading up to it. Then put into place one or two systems that address these issues. Test them for a month and reflect on how the output changed for you compared to the prior month. II. Identify one area in your development that you haven’t faced a problem in lately. Reflect on why that might be and devise a way to push that system harder. The goal being by the end of the month to identify a new bottleneck within that system. This means you have left the “safe zone” of your development and entered the growth zone where bottlenecks live and act as road markers on your journey of development. 1 Reflection Question When was the last time you faced and conquered a bottleneck? Until next month, Dr. Eric Rooker Founder of Operators to Owners